Best way to kill a lot of biter nests?

[fortysixand2]

On my second map, 63 hours in. No mods.

I have good production on most everything. 2 satellites launched.

But I'm starving for oil. I have several oil outposts, but they have all gone to .1/s. I get 4 or 5 barrels a train run.

radar map reveals another oil field quite some distance away. But I'm struggling clearing biter nests. I have a lot to go through. And then again for the next oil field.

I have power armor, the first one. personal defense laser. fusion generator thing. I've been getting into combat robotics a little. Mostly depending on the tank and dropping some turrets for help. I spend a lot of time repairing the tank.

I've researched the mk2 power armor, but I don't have enough oil to make it anytime soon. needs 2.3k plastic if I remember right.

Flamethower ammo can be done, I tried it. But with my oil production it seems slow. Most of my oil is cracked, then into petroleum gas.

I haven't been big in combat robotics, so maybe I'm missing a faster/ more efficent way to clear biters?
Just looking for some advice, tried the forum search and it didn't work.

[greep]

Cheapest way pre-behemoth is probably fully upgraded shotgun and an exoskeleton if you're low on oil. But 63 hours in you probably have behemoths, so I'd say turret spam. Make a smallish blueprint of lasers (3x3 or 4x4), bring along a roboport or a few, a chest to be filled with a few dozen turrets and medium poles, plop it down out of worm range with 100+ cargo bots, and then just spam that blueprint in their face. You can clean up whatever is out of roboport range with w/e or plop down another roboport

[fortysixand2]

Make a smallish blueprint of lasers (3x3 or 4x4), bring along a roboport or a few, a chest to be filled with a few dozen turrets and medium poles, plop it down out of worm range with 100+ cargo bots, and then just spam that blueprint in their face. You can clean up whatever is out of roboport range with w/e or plop down another roboport

Wow, thats fun and a lot easier. Had to reduce it a bit. but it works great. made a blueprint of 6 lasers, a light and a medium pole. put my personal roboport back in with some bots and watch the fun. still using the tank for kiting, and nest bombing. Still way better than what I was doing, Thanks.

[greep]

Yeah it gets pretty disgustingly powerful when you have mk2 and half a dozen personal roboports. They'll probably nerf it, but then again they're also going to nerf behemoths so people don't get stuck like this

[fortysixand2]

yeah it's powerful. Hope it doesn't get nerfed. But I can see why.

[Mehve]

Just to make sure - have you moduled the oil wells? Speed modules linearly increase how fast they produce oil, so a pair of tier 3 speed modules in each well will basically double the output. You can go a step further and use speed modules in beacons to further increase each well's output.

Everyone's got their own favourite method, I personally like the flamethrower, since after a few upgrades, the damage-over-time will kill anything short of a behemoth, allowing you to conserve fuel.

[fortysixand2]

Just to make sure - have you moduled the oil wells? Speed modules linearly increase how fast they produce oil, so a pair of tier 3 speed modules in each well will basically double the output. You can go a step further and use speed modules in beacons to further increase each well's output.

No I haven't put those on the oil wells. I'll give that a try, thanks.

[Albrecht]

Stack shields and do hit and run attacks with the flamethrower. Just spray fire everywhere and kite the mobs through it. Any fire that lands even close to a spawner causes it to pop.

[Nich]

I set 1 laser turret just in agro range. Then take the tank and run over the nests. Guns seem worthless and do next to no damage but man it flattens a nest like nothing. Avoid running into the big mobs as they can stop you flat in your tracks

[rolfl]

Destroyer capsules, good shields, mechanical legs, and just run through the nests. With anything more than 80 follower-bots I'll take on anything. Run out of range if you need a break.

Just don't get cornered by those darned behemoths...

Machine gun or combat shotgun to strafe as you run through is fun, but not necessary. It slows you down, and running is your best defense.

[Deadly-Bagel]

They're probably not going to nerf tower creep, there isn't a way to do this without nerfing them as a defensive tool as well or make it feel really artificial. Instead they're going to improve the other options for combat like fix rockets so they actually do something. Will they be as powerful as they need to be? I'm sceptical, but there's hope. At least they'll be stronger than they are.

[Nich]

Tower creep can be discouraged by a 30 second boot up after building. Infinite weapon upgrades (each one adds 5-10%) would be nice for clearing 1000's of nests for endgame factories. I also hate the fact that killing nests causes evolution. Also spawn rate should be continuous and MUCH MUCH slower. As of now it seems like they spawn up to a certain number and stop. However once you start killing them they spawn infinitely. It makes it so that there is a DPS hump you have to cross and then once you do it is easy to kill the nest. Until then your just wasting ammo.

[Selvek]

Tower creep can be discouraged by a 30 second boot up after building.

They said they had decided not to do this in a FFF a month or so ago.

My preference right now is run in with a flamer, spray all the nests, run out (requires shields and legs). You can kill the nests in a bunch of bases really fast that way. You may pick up a couple hundred biters on the way, but just keep moving and they'll eventually stop chasing. Or you can kill them pretty easily with the flamer if you need to (or lead them back to your main turret line). A very little flame fuel goes a really long way - I do a quick 360 spin (<1 second) to set the base on fire, no need to continually fire.

They plan to nerf this in the next update, so enjoy it while it lasts

[Nothingsus]

Destroyer bots/ on foot with exo skeleton/ dragon rounds auto shotgun/ full upgrades on the shotgun/ mk 2 power armour with 2 lasers

[Nich]

does adding more lasers add more dps? I built a power suit with 1 set of lasers and thought they were awesome but when I added 5 more I didnt really feel like the DPS had increased much if at all.

[greep]

It should. Most of us are talking about laser turrets, not personal laser defenses, though. However, one reason you might not see dps increases for either is if you're not using accumulators for turrets or don't have a fusion reactor for personal laser.